imitating art or the other way around? For those well-versed in their Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Keifer Sutherland, what happened last week in the West Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia was nothing out of the ordinary.
http://media.mlive.com/design/alpha/img/logo_mlive.gif104/23/200904/23/2009
-->

For those well-versed in their Tom Clancy, Robert Ludlum and Keifer Sutherland, what happened last week in the West Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia was nothing out of the ordinary.

In fact, when three U.S. Navy snipers ended a nerve-wracking hostage crisis by fatally shooting three Somali pirates to free the captain of the American Maersk Alabama cargo ship, well, wasn't that part of the script? Isn't that what Jack Ryan, Jason Bourne or Jack Bauer would've done?

Despite the violent deaths of three human beings at the hands of trained killers, a majority of America probably was waiting for just that exact resolution to the first act of piracy against the U.S. in hundreds of years. Even the most pro-life among us had to feel some silent satisfaction with the outcome. It's a telling reaction.

That said, the sharpshooting was indeed impressive, even for the experts. Three SEALS firing -- at the same time -- from the fantail of a rolling ship in the dark at three targets on a bobbing lifeboat 75 feet away and not injuring American Capt. Richard Phillips was, no matter how you cut it, out of the ordinary.

Telling, too, is that the trio received authority from President Barack Obama -- a so-called indecisive softy who was supposed to shrivel when a 3 a.m. call came -- to shoot if they thought Phillips' life was in danger. They did, and they shot.

Almost laughable were it not so macabre is the vow of the dead pirates' fellow predators to now single out American ships and "slaughter" their crews. Evil avenging its own evil? Not a lot of moral momentum there, just an unfathomable reliance on the world to turn a supposedly justifiable blind eye to retribution against those imperialist yankees.

So now the U.S. has to add Somalia to its global strategy bag. Patrolling that much seaspace -- more than a million square miles -- is out of the question. But it might include placing U.S. warships along the Somali coastline, hunting down and disabling pirate "mother ships," or even going after the maritime terrorists -- and the warlords who finance them -- on land.

Somalia couldn't validly protest as the country has no government to speak of. Nor could many other nations legitimately cry foul, not if they were flagship victims themselves.

What could become prohibitive, though, is the cost. Americans don't need yet another tax straw on their backs.

Some suggest creating small military forces like sky marshals that would randomly rotate on the ships that sail that part of the world. That might work. So might going after the pirates' financial assets.

But why not ask the shipping companies themselves to offer some solutions? Why not have them hire and train their own paramilitary detachments and outfit them with the weaponry to repel attacks on their own vessels?

Sure, Americans expect their military to protect Americans. But they also expect some initiative from the aggrieved as well -- script or no script.